The folks at Obsidian Entertainment might be swimming in gold pieces after their successful Kickstarter , but luckily for us, Project Director Josh Sawyer had enough time to dry himself off and answer a few burning questions in a Project Eternity Q&A held by RPG Codex .
First off, a party in Project Eternity can't grow beyond six “standard characters,” but special, quest-related NPC's can join a full party. You can also hire characters dubbed “hirelings” to man your stronghold, but they don't' join in your adventure and are never counted as party members.
When asked about Project Eternity's stealth system would work, Sawyer said player's will know how noticeable they are based on a visible “perception radius” floating around them. Your character's perception radius all depends on what their stealth skill's at, so a lumbering oaf of a warrior will probably have a harder time going unnoticed compared with a rogue slinking around in the shadows. Sawyer also described the other side of Eternity's stealth system—alert states.
“Creatures do have two detection states (other than not detecting anything): investigation and alert,” Sawyer said. “If you just 'bump' the edge of a creature's detection radius, it will typically move to investigate. If it gets close enough, it will switch over to an alert state. If the creature is already hostile toward the party, it will attack and "call for help" (to use an Infinity Engine term), potentially alerting its nearby allies.”
Sawyer also mentioned that the team was trying to avoid a combat system that requires strict solutions and pre-conceived strategies to win.
“We're trying to avoid sucker punches in fights, enemy tactics that demand a very specific combination of items, classes, spells, or abilities to overcome,” Sawyer said. “While there will certainly be strategic and tactical choices that will work very poorly in certain fights, we'd rather give the player a number of ways to win a battle. If we wind up creating specific formulae or one valid strategy to win a fight, I think that takes a lot away from the player's potential enjoyment.”
If you're curious about Obsidian's voice-over plans, crafting system, or financial management plans, simply check out the full Q&A right here .
